The Nostradamus File

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

St. John's was the kind of picturesque English church that found its way onto postcards. It was set in the countryside about a mile from the nearest village. Ronnie parked away from the building, by a graveyard filled with old, tilted monuments and markers. A bright moon cast shadows from the ancient stones.

The church was large, the stone walls gray and solid in the moonlight. The main part of the church was a long rectangle with a peaked roof. A tall, square bell tower rose at the end. An arched vestibule jutted out halfway down the side, flanked by pairs of narrow stone windows with diamond panes. A row of similar windows marched the length of the church along the roof.

The rectory was a separate building set off to the side. A path led to it from the church. The windows of the rectory were dark, the door shut tight against the night.

A pair of arched wooden doors led into the vestibule. The lock looked old, the kind of lock that opened with a heavy iron key. The doors were reinforced with iron straps and black iron hinges. Iron rings were mounted on each door. Ronnie grasped one and gently pulled. The door moved.

"It's not locked," he said.

Nick's ear was itching. "Something doesn't feel right."

"Nobody knows we're here," Selena said. Her voice was quiet. Her heart was pounding. She took a deep breath, another.

"Yeah. Lock and load," Nick said.

The guns came out. Nick nodded and Ronnie pulled the door open.

The vestibule was twelve feet deep and twice again as wide. A closed oak door led from the vestibule to the church. Nick eased it open and signaled the others to wait. He stepped into the church.

The interior was dim, quiet, lit by moonlight coming through the windows and a pair of fat candles burning on two high brass candleholders at the front. The roof was braced with a tented cross work of thick wooden rafters and beams, all of it supported by massive round columns of stone. From where he stood, the front of the church and the altar was to his left. A tall wooden pulpit reached by a narrow, spiral stair rose on the right of the altar, where the sermon would be read over the heads of the congregation. Behind it was the empty choir.

Marble plaques with the names of men fallen on one of England's many battlefields lined the walls. Rows of plain wooden pews took up both sides of a central aisle. A cross was set on the wall behind the altar.

There was something wrong. It took Nick a moment to realize that the altar was askew. It should have been placed at the end of the nave in the center, parallel to the congregation. But it was crooked, as if it had been moved. It was a solid rectangle of dark wood. There should have been things on it, a cross, candles, but it was bare. A white cloth lay crumpled on the floor beside it.

Nick's ear began to burn. There was a muffled cough from somewhere inside the church.

"Hit the deck!" he yelled.

Nick dove for the floor. Gunfire erupted from behind the altar and the pulpit. The rounds blew sharp splinters out of the door behind him. Automatic weapons opened up from the other end of the building, shattering the pews in front of him. Nick wriggled backward into the vestibule. Shots came from outside the church, thudding into the heavy wooden doors and ricocheting from the stone.

They were pinned down.